NOT since captain Mark Messier of the Mayflower organized the New World’s first team dinner in 1620 have the Rangers seemed to have so much for which to be thankful.

Theo Fleury is hungry again. All personal agendas have been tabled. Brian Leetch is feeding teammates at his highest rate ever. These guys’ heads are together and so should be their hands in gratitude to the one who bestows all blessings.

That’s right, Messier. He has revived more leftovers than mom will this Friday and as long as the Rangers keep their jaws set, their feet moving, and their fingers in an interlocking position, they can make the playoffs for the first time in four seasons. They have a prayer, as long as they keep praying for good health, probably more good health than they have fair reason to expect.

Messier, an amazing specimen for his age, turns 40 in two months. If he plays 70 games this year, it will be the first time in three seasons.

Leetch, averaging 30:24 minutes a game, played 35:38 in Calgary, 32:33 against Phoenix, 35:22 against Edmonton. He’s been so dominant at both ends of the ice, you would almost swear, at 32, a two-time Norris Trophy winner is getting better. But for certain, he isn’t getting any younger.

Coach Ron Low keeps saying Leetch can handle the load. So far, he has but the season is even longer than Leetch’s face has been at the end of March for three years. He has scored 26 points in 19 games by being incredibly active at both ends of the ice, and if the coach really believes Leetch can play at this pace, at this workload, for 82 games, then Rich Pilon, playing 25 minutes a game as Leetch’s partner at age 32, is Larry Robinson in his prime.

If two weeks of rest cures Vladimir Malakhov’s knee, Leetch’s ice time could shrink back to the more manageable 27-28 minutes a game, but right now that’s a huge assumption, and so is that Leetch can continue going like this into the dog days of February, when the Rangers, one of 12 teams going for eight spots, will need every point just like they need them now.

It’s going to take years to recycle a younger, bigger, stronger team, but Glen Sather, the new GM refuses to beg for time and with the budget he has nobody would be especially patient anyway. So the coach, with a couple of first-round wins in Edmonton on his resume and no profile in New York, is coaching like every Garden coach always has, to win the next game.

Low will ride the veterans until they drop. He has cut down his fifth defensemen, Brad Brown, to less than 15 minutes, barely plays Dale Purinton and Tomas Kloucek to little outcry from all the people who buried John Muckler for not playing such future stars as Jason Doig. Low is under the same pressure to get the team into the playoffs as was Muckler. He is coaching much the same way, arguably out of necessity, arguably into another dead end.

You know what you are going to get every night from Mike York. His up side seems to grow by the game and he has had as much to do with the revival of Fleury on the ice as Messier has had to do with it off the ice. But Petr Nedved, Radek Dvorak and Jan Hlavac meander from game to game. Messier has picked them up, and logic suggests at some point they are going to have to return the favor or the 40-year-old captain will look 65 by March.

Adam Graves has looked this dead on his feet before and bounced back, but each season the length of his good stretch shrinks. When Fleury, who has an unreal 15 goals in 19 games, inevitably cools down, you wonder who is going to pick up the slack.

The team does seem more energetic and resilient and of course Messier has everything to do with that. But it’s easy to forget that the Rangers, who came into last night’s game with Toronto looking so improved at 10-9, were 24-24-8 on Feb. 11 last year, thanks to a red-hot January by Richter and the Czech line. They won five games the rest of the year.

The crash came for deeper reasons than just fatigue, which is why Messier is back, and why he had better be able to keep contributing on the ice, to keep his positivism strong as ever in the locker room. But he and Malakhov are the only major additions to a team that last year missed the playoffs badly and will need very little going badly this time to make up the difference.

They are going to have to lean on very few people for a long, hard time for this Thanksgiving not to turn out to be a lot of thanks for nothing. This is more fragile than grandma’s best old china.